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David Byrne and composer Daniel Pemberton released “Let Me Sell You a Dream” today on Matador Records. It is the original song that closes MUSK, Alex Gibney’s documentary about Elon Musk, which opens tomorrow in New York and Los Angeles and on 16 October across the rest of the United States.
“It would be too easy and probably not as much fun to overtly criticize Musk,” says Byrne. “Better, I thought, to try and get inside his head a little bit, to use phrases he himself has used in interviews and statements, and let the character in the song be the one who describes himself.” It is the same method he used on “Here Lies Love”, the Fatboy Slim collaboration about Imelda Marcos, where many of the lyrics came from real statements.
Byrne recorded the song in hotel rooms while on tour, to a laptop with gear he picked up in London; Pemberton, who composed the film’s score, produced it. “I desperately wanted an uptempo song for the end of the film that would channel the chaotic spirit of Elon,” Gibney says. “I reached out to David — who happened to be in the UK. To my surprise and delight, he bicycled over to meet with Daniel and they conjured up musical magic.”
Byrne says he wrote the words and the melody without having seen the film: “But I trusted Gibney, I’d loved a bunch of his other movies I’d seen, and am a fan of Pemberton’s work. So when they approached me it sounded like fun.”
Musk declined to be interviewed for the documentary, and Gibney worked from his own recorded words in podcasts, old interviews and documentary outtakes.
The song is eligible for Best Original Song consideration at the 99th Academy Awards. Byrne won the Oscar for Best Original Score for “The Last Emperor” and was later nominated for Best Original Song for “This Is a Life”; Pemberton was nominated for “Hear My Voice”.
Text by Marçal Bonastre